Green Car News

It is one of the more remarkable features of the Tesla Model S electric luxury sedan: door handles that retract flush with the body until needed. But the retracting door handles proved tricky in practice; owner of early Model S cars reported that quite a lot of them had to be replaced under...

Ford Motor Company announced this morning that it would open its portfolio of patents related to electrified vehicles--meaning both hybrids and electric cars--to competitive automakers. The Dearborn, Michigan, company says its goal is to "accelerate industry-wide research and development of...

Think electric-car ownership is priced out of your league? It’s simply not. Even if leasing isn’t for you, or you don’t have the stellar credit required to get some of those deals, prices are plummeting on used electric vehicles—and that makes it a buyers’ market...

You can save a lot of money by improving the fuel economy of larger and thirstier vehicles, especially if they cover lots of miles each year. That's why business owners are usually considered to be more rational vehicle buyers than retail customers: The fleet vehicles often consume twice the fuel...

We look at vacation car-rental dilemmas, state electric-car fees, and yet another innovation from California carmaker Tesla Motors. All this and more today on Green Car Reports. Tesla takes a page from the retail industry and opens its first "popup store" to sell electric cars in Santa Barbara. Who...

Carbon guilt weighed heavily on my mind as I approached the car rental counter at the Salt Lake City Airport. The book I was reading on the plane (Sustainable Energy, by David JC Mackay) suggested that my portion of the energy for the round-trip plane ride from Boston and back would amount to...

Six states could soon levy separate taxes on electric cars.

A wind farm for an island off the New England coast is expected to dramatically lower residents' electricity bills.

So-called popup stores are an increasingly common way for retail brands to get media attention and attract new customers, without the expense of building and staffing a full-time location. Now California carmaker Tesla Motors is extending the concept to bring its luxury Model S electric car to...

We look at the latest hybrid and plug-in hybrid sedans from Hyundai, consider two standalone showrooms for advanced green vehicles, and ask if a gas pump may be the single germiest thing you touch in public. All this and more today (and over the long U.S. holiday weekend) on Green Car Reports...

The 2016 Toyota Mirai hydrogen fuel-cell sedan will go on sale in limited regions of California later this year, but it's already available in Japan. On a recent trip to Japan, your correspondent had a chance to head to downtown Tokyo to take a look at the combination of a dedicated Mirai showroom...

Porsche is recalling all 918 Spyders globally, including the 223 in the U.S.

A Kimberly-Clark study says gas-pump handles have the highest average concentration of germs.

Electric cars are still a rarity in most of North America, and for that matter most of the world. But California, which has led automotive trends pretty much since the Second War, is different. Electric cars are increasingly popular there, and they're becoming positively commonplace in Silicon...

What if you could fully restore your charge in a plug-in hybrid, on the fly, just by driving? It’s a feature that’s unparalleled in mass-market plug-in hybrids—that in the 2016 Hyundai Sonata Plug-In Hybrid you can enter not the charge-sustaining mode that some models have, but a...

A British company unveils an electric bicycle to demonstrate its new battery chemistry.

Which famous race driver turns out to love driving his electric car around London? And, what really gigantic object did a drone fly over, and shoot video of, last weekend? This is our video look back at the Week In Reverse--right here at Green Car Reports--for the week ending on Friday, May 22...

Audi and Chrysler make headlines today.

You may not hear about the thermal efficiency of engines much: It's the ratio of how efficiently they use the energy in the fuel they burn. Conventional gasoline engines have long run about 25 percent, diesels at 30 to 35 percent. But the gasoline engine to be used in the next generation of the...

Audi will launch its "sport SUV with electric drive" in 2018.